Internet – DNS: When Governments Lie

There’s been sudden interest recently in a Chinese route hijacking incident that occurred way back in April, brought about by a new report to the US Congress that highlighted the event (see pages 236-247). A second Chinese event, also in the report, has received almost no attention despite being much more interesting (technically, anyway). A Chinese DNS censorship incident occurred just one month earlier, in March, and although we already presented an analysis of that event (here and here), today we’ll provide an update on the incident and its scope. But first, let’s step back and get some context on events such as these, and see if the hype is warranted.

Remember What the Internet Is

The Internet is a globally distributed network without a central governing body. In other words, no one is in charge, folks. If you are expecting strict accountability, you’ve come to the wrong place. Furthermore, the Internet is a very complex system. Errors occur with some frequency, and occasionally have global impact. There have been plenty of them over the years (see our past blogs). No evidence has yet surfaced to convincingly suggest that either of these Chinese incidents was anything more than a mistake. The Internet was designed to be trust-based and these vulnerabilities are well-known and long-standing.

So maybe it wasn’t cyber-espionage after all. Let’s review the DNS event – very interesting in its own right – and you can decide for yourself. (And in the next installment of this blog, we’ll consider the general problem of hosting global services in a country known to tamper with Internet traffic.)

The Chinese DNS Problem

There are 13 different root nameserver IP addresses, referred to by the first 13 letters of the alphabet, namely, the A-root, B-root, …, M-root. These are the servers that tell you really basic things, like, ‘where’s dot com?’ At first glance this may seem like a pretty small set for the entire world, but they are replicated at hundreds of locations. The J-root is the most prolific, found worldwide at 70 different sites. And instances of the F-, I- and J-roots are all found in Beijing, China, which lays the seeds for a potential problem. If you live outside of China and by chance query a root nameserver hosted in China, your queries will pass through what is known as the The Great Firewall, potentially subjecting you to the same censorship imposed on Chinese citizens.

With respect to DNS, such censorship typically involves intentionally returning incorrect answers to the blacklisted domains. (See The Great DNS Wall of China for more technical details.) It would seem that the root nameservers in China are typically excepted from this behavior when queried from outside the country, but for unexplained reasons that allowance temporarily disappeared for the I-root back in March. (See our AMS-IX talk for more details.) That is, queries to the I-root from outside of China for popular domains such as Facebook or Twitter suddenly started returning incorrect answers. Due to the vagaries of Internet routing, web surfers around the world found themselves essentially blocked from these sites – exactly as if they lived in China. While the exception for the I-root was eventually reestablished, no reason for the apparent snafu was offered.

But isn’t it unusual for someone outside of China to query a Chinese root server?

No, not at all. On the Internet, you will often query “nearby” servers, but the concept of “nearby” is not the same in the cyber world as it is in the physical one. Rather, distance is measured in terms of existing business relationships. If your Internet service provider has a relationship with China Telecom, the root nameservers in China may by “closer” to you than identical ones in your own country, and hence preferred.

Renesys collects routing data from hundreds of locations (BGP peers) around the world. From this, we can observe when the IP space (prefixes) for the root nameservers propagate from domestic Chinese providers to non-Chinese ones. When this happens, routes to Chinese root nameservers are visible outside of the country and these servers will end up being queried from non-Chinese hosts. The following graph shows the number of our non-Chinese sources observing and selecting routes to the F-, I- and J-root nameservers via Chinese providers over the course of 2010.

Ok, but that’s just a fraction of your data sources. How many affected people are we talking about here?

More than you might think! While the total number of providers selecting the Chinese routes is interesting, it’s the size and scope of these providers that determine how many organizations end up using the Chinese servers. For example, if a major global provider (sometimes called a Tier-1) is one of these, many hundreds or thousands of downstream customers can be impacted. And as it turned out, there were a number of major providers represented in this small set.

To capture the breadth of the exposure to Chinese root nameservers in 2010, we considered every provider (Autonomous System) that selected a Chinese route at any point during the year. There were 38 such providers in total. Then we calculated all downstream networks (prefixes) of those 38 providers and ended up with about 57% of all networks on earth. To get a sense of the geographic impact, the following map gives the rough percentage of each country’s networks that could have used a Chinese root nameserver during the year. While the countries bordering on China tend to have the higher percentages, many others do as well. This is not the least bit unusual or alarming; it simply speaks to the global nature of the Internet.

The strong influence in Russia and Southeast Asia is not very surprising, but Chile? It turns out that Mauricio Vergara Ereche in Santiago was the first to report on bad DNS answers coming out of China. And despite making the most noise about the event, the US was only modestly affected.

So can we prevent DNS tampering in the future?

Yes. The accepted replacement for DNS is something called DNSSEC (“secure DNS”). Next week, we’ll talk about DNSSEC and look more at Internet censorship. What can you do when other people’s governments force service providers to lie to you? How can you protect yourself from having your DNS responses edited, when your traffic has to transit China or even Germany or Australia?

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Revolution ( in the US a constitutional right )

The 1776 Declaration of Independence stated that when a long train of abuses by those in power evidence a design to reduce the rights of people to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, it is the peoples right, in fact their duty to engage in a revolution.

and ….. JFK in his own words !

In a speech to the Newspaper Publishers Association in 1961, President Kennedy said:
“No president should fear public scrutiny of his program, for from that scrutiny comes understanding, and from that understanding comes support or opposition; and both are necessary. . . . Without debate, without criticism, no administration and no country can succeed, and no republic can survive. That is why the Athenian law makers once decreed it a crime for any citizen to shrink from controversy. And that is why our press was protected by the First Amendment.”

Abraham Lincoln said, just before his assassination:

I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country...Corporations have been enthroned, an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money-power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until the wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed."
Hmmmm.

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By Stephen Lendman | Global Research, September 01, 2014 On August 31, Israel’s Civil Administration announced confiscation of around 1,000 acres of privately owned Palestinian land. It lawlessly declared it State Land. It’s to establish a Gva’ot settlement. It’s located south of Bethlehem. It’s in the Southern West Bank. Peace Now calls itself “the leading […]

However dubious big Republican supporters of Israel felt about Donald Trump, in the last weeks of the election campaign many of them gave a lot of money to the Republican Party; and Sheldon Adelson and his wife gave $10 million to a pro-Trump PAC

This January, after several years of often-heated discussion and review, the Modern Language Association’s representative body will consider a resolution to endorse the Palestinian call for a boycott of Israeli academic institutions. The relative absence of Palestinian testimony from debates at scholarly associations prompted a number of MLA members to visit […]

At Texas A&M, alt-right leader Richard Spencer praises Israel for its intrinsically racist and exclusionist policies, and Hillel Rabbi Matt Rosenberg has no answer. No Zionist can have one, and no wonder Israel's defenders are queasy these days.

After a fire erupted in the illegal Israeli settlement of Halamish, dozens of Palestinians have been detained in the occupied West Bank village of Deir Nidham. And it has been blockaded by the Israeli army, “turning the lives of 1,600 into a prison,” locals told Ma‘an.

Palestinians have lived in the refugee camps around Lebanon since the Nakba in 1948 when they were forcibly ejected from their homeland by Israel. Most of these Palestinians have never set foot in Palestine and are prevented from doing so by Israel. Only the oldest have any memory of their homeland. Celia Peterson interviewed Palestinians of various ages in […]

Occupation-Free Portland, a coalition of faith, social justice and peace organizations, in collaboration with Seattle Mideast Awareness Campaign, have launched an ad campaign on TriMet buses serving the Portland, Oregon, metropolitan area that read, “Portland: Divest from Caterpillar. Caterpillar Violates Human Rights from Standing Rock to Palestine.” The ad […]

Chemi Shalev and Jeremy Ben-Ami say that if Keith Ellison is defeated for Democratic Party chair, there will be a backlash against the organized Jewish community that has opposed a rising star; and that is bad for Jews. Ellison is shaking up the discussion of US policy.

Jewish national self-determination (also known as Zionism) is an unshakable right and today an indivisible part of Jewish identity. You question it at your peril. Despite all that, Robert Cohen is chucking it in. You can have it back he says. He doesn't need it.

Last night the Peace United Church of Christ in Santa Cruz, CA voted to refrain from buying Hewlett-Packard (HP) products until HP companies cease to profit from Israel’s violation of Palestinian human rights. The congregation made the move as part of the HP-Free Churches campaign initiated by the Friends of Sabeel North America.

The Venice Commission, an advisory body at the human rights watchdog Council of Europe, says Turkey is abusing state of emergency laws in its wider efforts to purge so-called state saboteurs after the failed mid-July coup. It said the government is casting too wide a net over people linked to the Fethullah Gulen movement, which Ankara blames for the coup att […]

Dutch anti-EU, anti-Islam MP Geert Wilders will hear Friday whether he has broken the law by calling for "fewer Moroccans" in the Netherlands, but has already said in a statement he would not change his behaviour. "The verdict, whether acquittal or conviction, will not change anything de facto," Wilders said according to the Telegraaf new […]

The South Korean parliament has voted to impeach its scandal-hit president amid mass protests in Seoul. Park Geun-Hye faces being the first democratically-elected leader of the country to be kicked out of office following the vote. The impeachment motion had accused Park of constitutional and criminal violations ranging from a failure to protect people’s liv […]

Obama traveled to MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida this week to address the military for the last time. Obama defended his policies that resulted in the rise of the Islamic State. The lame-duck president also defended Islam and blamed Americans for feeding the terrorist narrative. Good grief. Breitbart reported: “Obama said, ‘We are […]

A sobering Ministry of Defense (MoD) report circulating in the Kremlin today states that President Putin’s ordering to full combat alert status yesterday of the feared S-400 Triumf air defense missile systems in the Western Military District along the Federations entire border with NATO aligned nations was in direct response to the “Christmas Threat” issued […]

A 41-year-old man had been detained on suspicion of murder, after he is believed to have set fire to his wife on a street in the northern town of Kiel on Wednesday. “We think it’s clear in this case that malevolence and brutality, both requisites for a murder charge, exist,” said state prosecutor Axel Bieler […]

It’s official – The ‘TRUMP STOCK MARKET RALLY’ continues to shatter the record books. As a matter of fact, what we have seen since President-Elect Donald Trump won the Presidential election on November 8th, has never occurred before. Out of 21 days since the election, the Dow has reached all time closing highs 13 of […]

Motorcyclist catches an escaped yellow parakeet with one hand /u/maestro89

Two Years /u/GreyRobe

You are clever my friend....very clever..... /u/4kaee

Last nights sunset in Zion NP, Utah [OC] 1200x797 /u/cozmo2312

Japan has launched a cargo ship which will use a half mile- (700m)-long tether to remove some of the vast amount of debris from Earth's orbit. /u/NinjaDiscoJesus

The Last Guardian (Dunkey vid) /u/CatsLikeToMeow

I am the harbinger of the companions, arch-mage, the listener of the dark brotherhood, thane of all 9 holds, master of the thieves guild, nightingale, werewolf, dragonborn... and this is still my proudest moment. (Credit u/lithium2017) /u/Clever_BigMack

It's Uber for haircuts! It's Uber for ice cream! The rash of startups claiming to mimic Uber but for other goods and service don't really get what Uber is. The post The 'Uber for X' Fad Will Pass Because Only Uber Is Uber appeared first on WIRED.

Without external cameras or beacons, Occipital's environment-mapping headset adds advanced mixed-reality capabilities to the iPhone 6, 6S, and 7. The post The Bridge Headset Powers Up iPhone VR With Positional Tracking appeared first on WIRED.

Dyson's Cu-Beam Duo looks like a satellite, runs for decades, and gives you total control of your office lighting. The post Dyson's Cu-Beam Duo Is a Radically New Office Lamp—Seriously appeared first on WIRED.

Curated this year by Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset, the 15th Istanbul Biennial, titled ‘A good neighbor,’ will deal with notions of neighborhood and home while exploring how living modes have changed. The biennial will take place between Sept 16 and Nov 12, 2017

Turkish actress Tuba Büyüküstün, who has many fans around the world thanks to her appearance in various TV series, especially in the Middle East, drew great interest at the recent 13th Dubai International Film Festival.

Fifty-one academics out of 87 who were issued detention warrants have been detained by police at Istanbul University over suspected links to U.S.-based Islamic preacher Fethullah Gülen, accused of orchestrating the July 15 failed coup attempt, state-run Anadolu Agency has reported.

Excavation work in a house in the southern province of Mersin’s Tarsus district has drawn much curiosity after continuing for 20 days under the direction of the special forces and the National Intelligence Agency (MİT), Doğan News Agency has reported.

Turkey has criticized a decision by a Greek appeals court to reject an extradition request for five Turkish soldiers who fled to the country after the failed coup of July 15, repeating its call for the extradition of a total of eight Turkish military personnel

The Turkish government has expressed concern over Israel’s plans to establish a new settlement project on occupied Palestinian territories, in a statement issued by the Foreign Ministry late on Dec. 8.